Author: TomC

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What Is the Old New Way?

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

The Old New Way is a group that formed in the fall of 2014 in Berkeley, California, with the intention of exploring what it is to be human in the 21st century.

We want to ask the Big Questions — Who am I? What’s the point of it all, anyway? How can I recognize right from wrong? — but without resorting to supernatural answers of any kind.

We accept that we are products of millions upon millions of years of evolution; that we are a particular kind of bipedal primates, members of a species called “homo sapiens.”

ape-tree

We get it.

155 years after On the Origin of Species, it’s sinking in.

We realize that we therefore cannot expect to “know” everything. Nor can we hope to  “transcend” the physical world, since our capacities are limited by nature. (After all, even our strong moral sense and our “consciousness” are — so far as we can see — products of our biology.)

Oh yeah, and we accept that when we die… that’s it.

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What an amazing time to be alive!

With the threadbare fables and myths of millennia falling away around us, we can see more clearly than ever before!

Join us.

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Readings and activities for the Old New Way will range widely. (All suggestions welcome!)

It is our hope that, through this group, we will add to our understanding of ourselves and our world, and therefore enable ourselves to give more to the people around us.

Please feel free to take part  in our discussions — either in person or online.

An Invitation
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An Invitation

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014

Hi Friends,

I am inviting you to join a new group.

This one is going to be different.

I am starting this group to explore nothing less than… how to live. How we might become a little more clear on such questions as:

What matters?

How can I act with more consistency in my life, and less confusion?

What increases my capacity for love?

What do I do with my sadness or my anger?

What I want to pursue, in this group, is a renewed sense of the sacred, but one that does not rely on supernatural claims. A sense of the sacred that is grounded in this life — your life as lived, full of everyday experiences.

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How are we going to pursue such an ambitious (audacious, you say) goal?

Well, that’s what we are going to try to figure out. I dont have the answers of course. But I do have the urge to try, together.

I propose a monthly meeting at my house (first one on Thursday, October 16, in just over two weeks), for which we do a small amount of reading in advance.

So, for example, one month we may read short excerpts from the Epicureans, the Stoics, the ancient Greeks. The next, from Montaigne and Shakespeare. The next from the French Enlightenment, or Nietzsche, or James, or Dawkins, or from current-day findings in anthropology and neuroscience.

The intention will not be a mere intellectual exercise, though, or a vigorous debate for its own sake — not at all. Our intention will be simple, every time: to deepen our lives in a lasting way.

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For the first meeting we will discuss the so-called “prehistoric” era, and our earliest ancestors’ understandings of themselves and their relationships with the world around them. Particularly their relationships to other animals. Seems a good place to start, since that’s how humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years before the modern era.

If this appeals to you, then join us!

Love,

Tom

Reading for the First Meeting — PREHISTORY
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Reading for the First Meeting — PREHISTORY

MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2014

For this first meeting, we are going to look at how humans understood themselves and their world in the period known as “pre-history”.

After all, when you think about it, this is the longest period of human existence, stretching hundreds of thousands of years… (Language and so-called “behavioral modernity” are thought to have emerged about 150,000 to 100,000 years ago.)

How did our early ancestors view themselves and the world around them?

What can we learn from their view?

That seems like a useful place to begin, doesn’t it?

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I have put together a small packet of readings for this meeting, meant to provoke us.

In the packet you will find the following:

1. An excerpt from Georges Batailles “The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture”

The Cradle of Humanity

2. An excerpt from Malcolm Margolin’s The Way We Lived

The Way We Lived

3. An excerpt from Malcolm Margolin’s The Ohlone Way

The Ohlone Way

4. D.H. Lawrence’s poem “The Snake”

Snake

5. Francis Ponge’s poem “Horse”

News of the Universe

6. An excerpt from David Abram’s “Becoming Animal”

Becoming Animal

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Some questions to reflect upon…

What is your own sense of separateness from, or communion with, other animals? Do you have a story to share?

How much of our sense of being different from, and even superior to, other animals is learned in your childhood? How much of it is true? Is this difference important to you?

When you consider animals do you think of them as inferior? Is it your “reason” that sets you apart? Or is it human “consciousness” (what is that anyway?)? Or is it your capacity for symbolic thinking? Or perhaps it’s just tribal loyalty — as a member of our vulnerable, nearly hairless, featherless bipedal primate tribe? (Fair enough, lions and wasps and all other living things probably feel this sort of tribal loyalty too, in some indescribable manner.)

Does accepting that you are an animal, and that your brain emerged, by way of adaptation over millions and millions of years, for certain terrestrial purposes and not others, make you think about the world differently?

A few more questions… 

What’s behind the appeal of the concept of “paleo” in the year 2014?

Why, for example, is the Paleo diet trendy right now? What is behind this current-day myth-making, harkening back to that life, prior to agriculture and society?

What does it make you feel to imagine the lives of our ancient ancestors and their very different world?

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A Brief Email Exchange on the Origins of Music

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2014

In anticipation of our first meeting, on October 16, 2014 (which will focus on prehistory), Christopher kindly emailed to the group the following video clip — amazingly preserved from the Neolithic era!

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This prompted Sasha to share with the group a book she had read that more seriously discusses the origins of music. She wrote:

….according to the book “The Great Animal Orchestra” by Bernie Kraus (Mills Music Grad),
human music originated from the sounds of animals.

So too language. Considering birds appeared well over 100 million years ago, and squirrels (they are chatty too), 50 million, seems like a likely theory. We were relatively silent in comparison to our nonhuman neighbors.

Ahh, how far we’ve come.

~Sasha P

I answered this with another email:

In David Abram’s book “Becoming Animal” he has an extended meditation on how closely tied we primates are — evolutionarily — to birdsong.

Think of how important it was to hear nearby birds fall silent when a predator approached. Or to know the differences between their courtship songs or call-and-response songs or warnings or distress.

It’s good to think of us feeling that, on some level, when we listen to, say, the harmonica break in “Love Me Do” — “Ahh, that’s a courtship song, ok to relax…”

So much happening to us all the time that comes from our relationship with nature.

 

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An Email Exchange on the Question of Consciousness

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2014

A number of members have been sending emails back and forth on the question of whether there is something distinct about human “consciousness” (thus setting us apart from other animals).

neural networks

Ivan wrote to me, suggesting that the group might benefit from reading Thomas Nagel’s essay, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (click here to read).  And he added this commentary:

The crux of Nagel’s argument is that for every conscious being there is something internal and subjective that it is like to be that being and that this something cannot be reduced to that physical object we refer to as the brain. I mention this because I noted the reference to consciousness in the materials you circulated.

Personally, I don’t find the question, “What is consciousness?” difficult to understand — it’s the totality and flood of feelings, thoughts, sensations and perceptions we all experience throughout our lives. The difficult and interesting question from my perspective is: how can there be consciousness in the physical world of particles and forces described by modern science; or, how can the slab of meat inside our skulls possibly account for conscious life — after all, they are categorically different. One way to put this is that there is a seemingly unbridgeable “explanatory gap” between the brain in our skull and our conscious life…

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Dean then happened to send to the group a link to an opinion piece in the New York Times (click here to read) by Michael S. A. Graziano, covering some of the same territory.

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To which I responded by sharing my response to Ivan’s earlier email:

Why are we talking about consciousness? Why is this coming up for us in advance of the meeting? 

This question may not seem, at first glance, directly related to the topic this month, which is devoted to exploring prehistorical understandings of what it is to be human…

And yet it comes up quickly when we consider their (and our) relationships with other animals. Certainly it is central to why humans have claimed a unique status, as the only animal capable of self-awareness, “free will,” a “soul,” a “moral sense” — all resting on “consciousness.” For these are the buzz words that have traditionally set us apart — in the Great Chain of Being model favored by religions.

These words have warm associations for us all of… specialness, awareness, attentiveness, etc. But they are also linked to our sense of difference and alienation from nature, I would suggest.

103234-100690

Is this guy, in some important way, not self-aware?

As for the article, I am more with Churchland et al. over Nagel and Searle, in the sense that I agree that our “mental states” — desires, feelings, “logic,” even the sense of self-awareness itself, are probably merely folk descriptions of neuronal-electrical activity in our physical brains.

Now of course they still matter deeply to us — we desire, we feel, we are aware of ourselves! — but that doesn’t mean that they need mystify us and stump us with an “explanatory gap.” The experience of being a bumblebee is (we may imagine) a series of urges to fly straight to pollen sources, to return to the hive, to jitter in a way to convey information to other bumblebees. The experience of a human is a series of urges to make human-like noises, causing reactions in other humans, to eat, to walk, to have sexual intercourse, etc.. We can call it our vaunted “consciousness” but as far as I can see it really is no more than the record we keep of these urges. I am unimpressed by consciousness.

And it’s not only philosophers who dwell on this word too much, in my view. People who practice meditation, are similarly hung-up on consciousness. They often claim to want to escape thoughts and experience “pure consciousness”. But I am suspicious that such a state is merely another record of neuronal activity, this time oriented towards an intuitive unity of physical inputs and other brain activity (perhaps lessoning the left hemisphere’s role and listening to the right hemisphere). It is no more transcendent or “pure” than anything else (though it certainly feels good and may be a worthy goal to pursue for promoting happy and peaceful behavior).

I do think, like Churchland, that the whole language around this is a residue of supernaturalism and religion, artifacts of our history.

But I am open to the possibility that I just don’t see it. In which case my resistance to the mystery about “consciousness” is interesting in itself. What threat would it pose to me if I were to acknowledge a problem here with my materialist/naturalist view?

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Ivan then wrote back again:

Thanks for your thoughts and, yes, I think on this one we are going to have to agree to disagree!  I’m admittedly hung up on consciousness – my feelings, thoughts, sensations, my internal experience of color and awareness of the information I process, my very sense of self – all seem to me to possess a distinctive qualitative reality and to constitiute the most important (real) feature of my existence…

Also, the “explanatory gap” strikes me as philosophically self-evident: conceptually, I don’t see an explanatory bridge from brain to consciousness any more than I do from brick to consciousness. One strategy, of course, is to invoke the concept of a “brute fact” – i.e., it is just a fact of nature that when certain stuff (organic chemicals, etc.) combine in a certain way, you get consciousness. But brute facts are not only philosophically unsatisfying, they also seem to me an admission if ignorance. Another strategy (Nagel’s most recent one) is the suggestion that our current picture of the physical world is incomplete and it is this incompleteness that bars (conceptually speaking) the reduction of mind to brain. That certainly seems to me a real possibility (but certainly NOT any kind of argument for the existence of God in any remotely religious sense).

At the end of the day, my sense is that there are aspects of the world that may forever remain mysteries (brute facts, I suppose) to our species. I think consciousness may be one of them, but perhaps even gravity falls into this category (attraction from a distance – really? How does that work? It just does, and so we have an incredibly powerful explanatory model that allows us to make successful predictions). In this somewhat broader context, I highly recommend Chomsky’s article, “Mysteries of Nature” (click here to read)  published in the Journal of Philosophy and available online.

And yes – this is certainly interesting stuff to ponder …

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To which I responded again:

Hey Ivan,

Thanks for writing back again on this with more clarification of your thoughts.

I understand that you have the feel of a distinctive quality to your self-awareness or “consciousness”. (So do I, you will be reassured to hear. Have no fear of those frequent scenes in sci-fi movies where the trusted companion is revealed to be a cyborg, with circuits and wires under his skin instead of the stuff you expect.)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

But I still don’t understand the threshold difference between our responses to this feeling. Why should this distinctive feeling of consciousness call out, to you, for some additional “whole is more than the sum of its parts” explanation? To me it is unclear, even, what you are looking for… Something more than your brain and its activity?

By the way, what do you think of the analogy a neuroscientist used when interviewed (click here to read)… He said that, to him, wanting to separate “consciousness” from the physical parts of your brain is akin to wanting to separate “motion” from the parts of your car. You’re never going to find a separate thing: motion is just what your car DOES when you have those physical parts working together. In the same way, isn’t it an answer to say that consciousness is just what your brain does when you have all these neural networks working together, sending electrical/chemical signals around in response to internal and external stimuli?

I do agree that there are many things that we are never going to understand, due to the limitations of our particular mental make-up (adapted for survival as medium-sized, predatory mammals living in grasslands). I wish we could see like hawks, think like dolphins… Being human, we are astonishingly good at social interaction, and we have had surprising success in understanding the mechanics of the physical world around us (gravity being an exception, as you point out). Still, we are unavoidably limited by our finite capacities. So yes, that could be one way to explain why we can’t understand and define consciousness… 

But another is just to say that there is, simply, no additional, supra-material thing to grasp. Yes, there is the subjective experience of each brain (actually, each hemisphere of the brain separately, as experiments show!). But we already have methods of conveying that. Art describes that subjective experience quite well — hence the shiver you get when you encounter it. The experience of listening to music can even capture subjectivity without words. Aren’t these enough? Why do you seek an observer-independent explanation? (Well I agree it would certainly be interesting, if possible — but I suspect there would be little to say except that which we already know, namely that “consciousness” is a feeling, the feeling of being present.)

I suspect that this difference between our outlooks (as esoteric as it is; some in the group, I am sure, will feel our difference is a case of intellectually splitting hairs), will keep coming back to interest us as we try to grope our way towards a non-supernatural approach to meaning.

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To which Ivan responded one last time (in CAPITALs — though, mind you, he was not shouting, only differentiating between my email and his response):

On the question I posed on why he wanted some “additional” explanation, other than a biological one (what he refers to as a “brute fact”)…

I’M NOT LOOKING FOR AN “ADDITIONAL” EXPLANATION – JUST AN EXPLANATION. THE INTERNAL WORLD OF CONSCIOUSNESS, WITH ITS DISTINCTIVE QUALITATIVE FEEL, IS AS MUCH A PART OF THE NATURAL ORDER AS THE PLANT ON MY DESK; HENCE, IT TOO CRIES OUT FOR EXPLANATION. THE ELECTRICAL AND CHEMICAL ACTIVITY THAT TAKES PLACE IN MY NERVOUS SYSTEM SEEMS TO BELONG TO AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT REALM. IT IS CLEARLY RELATED TO CONSCIOUSNESS, BUT EXACTLY HOW THE TWO WORLDS INTERLOCK IS WHAT WE DON’T REALLY UNDERSTAND AND THE PROBLEM IS THAT SIMPLY PILING UP MORE KNOWLEDGE RE THE TYPE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES THAT TAKE PLACE IN THE BRAIN, AND LEARNING ABOUT ADDITIONAL “CORRELATIONS” BETWEEN BRAIN AND MIND, WON’T CHANGE THAT ONE BIT. YOUR LAST SENTENCE REMINDS ME OF A FAMOUS ARTICLE IN THIS AREA: “WHAT MARY DIDN’T KNOW” (click to read). MARY IS A COLORBLIND SCIENTIST WHO KNOWS EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT THE BRAIN. ONE DAY HER COLORBLINDNESS IS CURED AND SHE EXPERIENCES THE COLOR RED FOR THE FIRST TIME. DID SHE LEARN SOMETHING NEW? OF COURSE. DOES THIS SUPPORT THE POSITION THAT BRAIN AND MIND ARE NOT IDENTICAL – I THINK SO.

(But do we need something additional to explain, for example, the feeling of anger? Or the taste of a mango? They are “part of the natural order” as well, aren’t they? Why is “consciousness” different for you — that is, why does it require a deeper explanation than other mental states? — Tom)

Then Ivan responded to the analogy that consciousness arises from the physical parts of a brain… like motion arises from the physical components of a car.

I DON’T FIND THIS LINE OF REASONING CONVINCING AT ALL. I DON’T FIND IT HAS ANY REAL EXPLANATORY POWER. IS THE ARGUMENT NOW THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS BRAIN ACTIVITY OR THAT IT RESULTS FROM BRAIN ACTIVITY (VERY DIFFERENT POSITIONS)?? ALSO, MY EXPERIENCE IS THAT NEUROSCIENTISTS HAVE A HARD TIME UNDERSTANDING THE PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUE AND A TENDENCY TO DIMINISH THE SIGNIFICANCE OF QUESTIONS AND PHENOMENA THAT DON’T FIT EASILY WITHIN THEIR CURRENT EXPLANATORY MODEL. IN ANY CASE, YOU DON’T NEED TO GO TO THE NEUROLOGIST. SEARLE TRIED ARGUING THAT CONSCIOUSNESS STANDS IN THE SAME RELATION TO THE BRAIN AS DIGESTION TO THE STOMACH. BUT AGAIN, I’M NOT CONVINCED AT ALL. THE STOMACH DIGESTS FOOD BY CRUSHING IT UP AND SECRETING CHEMICALS THAT BREAK IT DOWN (OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT …) – ALL OF WHICH IS CONCEPTUALLY CLEAR AND SO PHILOSOPHICALLY UNPROBLEMATIC. THE STRUCTURE AND ACTIVITY OF THE STOMACH “SLOTS” EASILY INTO THE PHENOMENON OF DIGESTION. I DON’T SEE THAT THE SAME HOLDS FOR THE STRUCTURE AND ACTIVITYOF THE BRAIN AND THE PHENOMENON OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

THERE DOES SEEM TO BE SOMETHING ADDITIONAL TO GRASP – ADDITIONAL TO THE WORLD OF PARTICLES AND FORCES AS CURRENTLY DESCRIBED BY PHYSICISTS: THE WORLD OF CONSCIOUSNESS. THIS WORLD WILL ALWAYS HAVE A PRIVATE, SUBJECTIVE CHARACTER, BUT DOESN’T ANY GENUINE EXPLANATION OF HOW WE HAVE CONSCIOUSNESS NEED TO BE PUBLIC AND OBJECTIVE (AND SO OBSERVER-INDEPENDENT)?

(I don’t think it does. That is a theological habit, I think, which is still ingrained in all of us: looking for a universal basis for things (Plato’s ideas, for example, or the major monotheistic religions’ versions of an unfathomable God). In the same way we still have the habit of looking for universally applicable or “categorical” moral or aesthetic rules — when our own private and subjective (and often ad hoc) ones do quite well, in most cases. — Tom)

I JUST WANT A CONCEPTUALLY CLEAR EXPLANATION OF HOW CONSCIOUSNESS CAN EXIST IN THE WORLD AS CURRENTLY DESCRIBED BY PHYSICS. IT MAY BE THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS BEST SEEN AS A KIND OF COUNTER-EXAMPLE THAT SHOWS THE PHYSICIST’S CURRENT PICTURE IS LACKING SOMETHING. THAT IS NAGEL’S VIEW. WHY SHOULDN’T THIS BE THE CASE?

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With that, Ivan and I agreed that we were getting perilously close to reaching the limits of what we could accomplish with an email exchange — and we would have to carry our concerns into a person-to-person conversation sometime!

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Thinking About Humans and Animals

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2014

by Heather Clague

It is interesting that the question of consciousness comes up when thinking about human exceptionalism, but I agree with you that there is ample evidence that many animals have forms of consciousness that we can easily recognize as sentient experience worthy of our empathic inquiry and moral consideration.  We cannot rest arguments that humans are unique on the presence of conscious experience.  Also, even if we do have mental capacities not shared by other animals, as you have pointed out, every species is ‘special’ in it’s own way, and it would be a mistake to valorize our particular peacock tails over the miraculous adaptations of each species to its particular set of selection pressures.

But if I am ready to say that we aren’t aesthetically or morally special, there is no denying our exceptionality in terms of evolutionary success.   We have the largest biomass of any single terrestrial species, and if we include the biomass of domesticated animals, humans and the animals under our dominion have the greatest biomass of any species on Earth. Is it not reasonable to wonder at what about ourselves has allowed this to happen?  Our cognitive and social-emotional capacities may not seem that much different than those of chimps, but whatever that difference is has been enough to allow us to swarm and drive them nearly to extinction.

I believe the capacity that has allowed us to separate ourselves from other creatures is our particular capacity to cooperate.  This ability emerges from an interrelated set of faculties that extend beyond mere consciousness, and include language, sophisticated empathy and motivation for intersubjective sharing, moral sense and cultural transmission.  We can find animal examples of these individual skills, but none come close to the degree manifest by humans.  At some point, a large enough quantitative difference becomes a qualitative difference.  Had humans not stumbled into settled agriculture and the industrial revolution and taken over the world, I do not believe that chimps would have done so.  Planet of the Apes was never a possibility.  It is ironic, then, that the capacity that has allowed us to achieve near complete domination is based on our ability to feel that this domination may be wrong.

Is this group then not an opportunity to articulate a sophisticated morality that appreciates our mental capacities and acknowledges our modern social and environmental perils?  We are living at densities our brains and bodies did not evolve to handle, and we are most certainly altering the globe through climate change and mass extinction.  We evolved an ability to feel concern for others to serve our reproductive self interest; I take the view that effective ethical behavior is a form of enlightened self interest. Should we extend our moral concern to non-human creatures and the environment?  To people we don’t know living places we will never visit?  I’m afraid we have to; it’s become a small world, and as this horrific ebola outbreak is showing us, what goes around comes around.

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Notes on the First Meeting — PREHISTORY

SUNDAY OCTOBER 18, 2014

The first meeting! It begins.

When we had all taken our seats in the living room, shortly after 8:30 pm,  I started us off by sharing my thinking behind the name of our group.

1. Why “the Old New Way”?

We are doing something new tonight, I said.

But we are also doing something very, very old. We are asking the same questions that have been asked by, well… by  pretty much everyone, all through human history.

Who am I?

Why am I here?

How should I act? 

What happens after I die?

And as we will see (in our readings going forward), even taking a strictly non-supernatural approach to these questions is not new.

Hence the “old” part.

But then, you might ask: how are we are doing anything new at all?

For one, this is new because… we are doing it here and now, in October of 2014. The mere fact of our timing, in this place, at this moment, makes it new.

For another, this is new because… we have no idea where these meetings will lead us and how we will grow from them.

More than these points, however… there is another important way that I think what we are doing is new:

We will have to fashion a new language even to talk about it.

2. Why Will We Need a New Language? 

I elaborated a little more on this point:

The languages and associations we all bring with us to this first meeting, I suggested, are steeped in old dichotomies, old categories, old habits. No fault of our own; that’s just how it goes.

For example, unless we deliberately resist it…

  • we tend to think that rationality operates independently from emotion;
  • we tend to think of capital “M” Meaning as being “out there,” separate from an individual’s assessment of it. (We are in the habit of craving “objectivity” in all aspects of our lives);
  • we think of there being at least the possibility of reconciling all of our values and aspirations in a unified way, if only we could… just get it right;
  • many of us seek unseen realities, which are sometimes characterized as “transcendent” realms;
  • we think of “the animal part” of each of us (in so far as we acknowledge it at all) as a wild, impulsive nature, which must be directed into the proper channels (by what? The “non-animal part” of us?).

Much of this is a product of millennia upon millennia of religious, or so-called “spiritual” thinking.

This type of talk has infiltrated American’s politics especially, since our “rights”-based revolution drew from French Enlightenment thinkers, worshipers at the altar of Reason, as well as Platonic/Judeo-Christian traditions of thought.

It is the air we breathe.

We will attempting to refashion language in this group. Sounds ambitious, doesn’t it? And it is! I want us to actively contest these usual categories…

  • changing our orientation of ourselves so that we do not forget our status as evolutionary beings, animals formed by cross-currents of adaptation, not perfectible or pure in any sense but rife with contradictions all the way down;
  • reminding us that we are animals in everything we do (yes, even when listening to Mozart while doing higher math– all the way down);
  • looking with fresh eyes at our contemporary notions of “love,” “death,” “work,” “good,” “evil,” “real,” and so on; and
  • making sure to pay attention to our wordless, emotional, strangest responses, as much as we pay attention to what can be more easily articulated and affirmed by others.

I think we should embrace the confusion that this will cause us.

Confusion will be our friend in this process, since it will signal when we are getting somewhere.

3. Some Very General Guidelines for Our Group as We Begin

At this point, since this was our first meeting, I shared with the group some very general guidelines that I thought would be worth mentioning.

First, I said, I want to encourage complete freedom of expression in this group (and all the time! Why not?).

I don’t want there to be any confusion on this point… What I mean is that ANYBODY is encouraged to say ANYTHING and EVERYTHING at ANYTIME.

(As those of you who know me have already witnessed, I sometimes try to pursue a thought by saying provocative things, or extending the logic behind an argument to its limit… And I want you all to feel free to do that too!)

We all know, of course, that words can never adequately express much of what we will be exploring in this group. But – hey, we have words, and we should not be afraid of them just because they are inadequate.

Second, this group will be focused on finding non-supernatural ways of looking at the world and our identities in it.

This means some approaches, although they surely can be expressed, may not be where we stay.

Other groups (“places of worship,” as they are called, certain spiritual retreats, and so on) often use the language of “faith” and “transcendence” and “God is love” and the like. That probably won’t be the case here — where we will be more inclined to leave God out of it entirely and just go with the love.

I am interested in keeping our focus on thoroughly natural concerns and experiences. This life. This world.

It is my hope that these parameters will give our group its unique interest — and its value.

Third, it’s okay for us not to agree.

I want to say from the beginning that I expect everyone here to have a very idiosyncratic experience with this group.

For some this group may inspire you, for others it may frustrate you. Some of us will perhaps be changed by it, perhaps for the better; others of us may feel blocked, or made anxious, or even angry at times.

That’s fine.

It would be wonderful if we all arrived together at a rich synthesis of emotional awareness and philosophical understanding by the end of our meetings. But then again, it would be disturbing too if that happened  – wouldn’t it?

And anyway, I asked the group, don’t you find that, with surprising frequency, the very things you were most certain of ten years ago are the things that you feel completely different about today?

Let’s cherish our disagreements.

4. A Breathing Exercise to Begin

To start us off, I asked those present if I could lead us in a very brief… breathing exercise, before we plunged into our discussions. (I explained that I have found from experience that I think more clearly — and more intuitively — when I do this.)

So with only a slight feeling of awkwardness, and lots of good will, we closed our eyes and steadied ourselves for a moment before beginning.

5. The Question of “Attentiveness”

Not wanting to take any more time, I started us off at this point with a simple query for the group…

When we think of prehistoric people, I said, we imagine that they were extremely attentive to their surrounding — a leaf rustling, a change in the weather, a crooked branch that might be used as a tool.

But in thinking of them in this way over the last weeks it struck me… that we don’t want to over-romanticize them.

So my question was: Are we just as attentive now as prehistoric people were — only to different things?

Marie-José answered quickly and decisively, as those of us who know her would expect.

“Yes we are equally attentive!” she said. “But the stakes are much lower for us. We pay attention to which loaf of bread we want to buy at the bakery, or how to access an email on our iPhone while talking, or what music we want playing in the background as we drive. But for prehistoric people, a wrong decision about the weather, or what to listen to, could cost their lives. That is the difference!”

Lucie argued that we may be attentive, as Marie-José suggests, but in a far more superficial way. We don’t take the time to experience the fullness of what we are doing. Richard agreed that the distractions and busyness of our lives are such that we tend to glance from thing to thing. And it is getting worse, he suggested, in the digital age. “We are constantly being entertained,” he remarked.

Renée spoke of her recent experience of watching two men walk together down the sidewalk in San Francisco, both listening to music through bulky headphones. She couldn’t but help think how sadly unaware they seemed of their surroundings — and each other.

Sylvaine commented that she thought an important difference is that prehistoric people had more space.

Setenay questioned the vagueness of the term “attentive.” She wondered if we may be as attentive as prehistoric people, but not as “focused.”

Dean raised a contrary view to the one expressed so far.

He explained that he guessed we actually ARE as attentive, since our cognitive abilities are probably quite similar to prehistoric human beings. After all, the stakes for us when driving are certainly high. The stakes of which medication to take for a disease can be as high too. And many of the social and career choices we make have very serious consequences for us.

For Dean, then, we are simply in a different context, and we have adjusted accordingly.

6. Seeing the Whole Animal

I spoke up at this point to say that, although I agree generally with Dean that we are probably similarly attentive to our surroundings — though very different in what we choose to focus on — there is one aspect of our attention that seems to me markedly different.

Namely, we usually view animals as separate from us, inferior to us, almost as objects “That damn raccoon got into the garbage again last night!” I may mutter, never thinking of the raccoon as anything but a nuisance.

Whereas, as the reading brought out, prehistoric people likely saw animals as equally whole and present beings. We might speculate that a prehistoric man would have said something like… “Oh! That raccoon with the slight bend in her tail, you know the one we saw two full moons ago, she was hungry and found our meat scraps to feed her children. I wonder if she is ill?” (Not to say my prehistoric counterpart wouldn’t then throw a rock; I’m not imputing more generosity in this case, just more awareness.)

Cave paintings from the prehistoric era often depict a nuanced, shadowed, fully rendered animal, and then… a human stick figure. George Bataille (in one of our readings) speculates that this is because human beings, for most of human existence, did not perceive of themselves as the protagonists standing above and apart from their prey. They knew many animals around them to be graceful, fast, powerful, wily. They readily observed these animals undergoing their own mental and emotional processes. Surely, they were worthy of being rendered in detail.

Humans, on the contrary, are often a minimal element: the one holding the spear, the one hunting, but hardly the focus.

Field Museum 6

I drew the group’s attention to the illustrations in a book entitled “The Dawn of Man,” which I have had since a young boy. One in particular cracked me up when I pulled this book down from the shelf last week in anticipation for this meeting.

It depicts a distant relation of ours, Heidelberg man, from the Middle Pleistocene of Germany.

What amuses me about this artist’s rendering is that this primate relative is posed in a manner suggesting the Mona Lisa, staring at us in the foreground, with a line of lush trees creating depth of field behind. We can imagine that this would never have been the way that prehistoric people would have rendered themselves. It assumes an entire ideology of dominance over, and separateness from, nature, in its very composition.

Here it is. See?

photo-19

Something about the modern assumptions behind his “pose” just gets to me every time I look at it.

We talked more about our relationships to animals. Renée embarrassed me by describing the elaborate growling noises and the bizarre contortions of my body that occur when I try to chase off a neighborhood cat who is terrorizing our own. I conceded that this is perhaps the closest I get to a communion with an animal, since I have to imaginatively enter the mind of a cat defending its territory to embody it.

Richard pointed out that if, in prehistoric times or any time, humans perceived themselves as “equal” with other animals, than rather than suggesting their equality, this very perception marks them as strikingly different! No other animal, he conjectured, would try to see deep into the eyes of a human so to experience its wholeness. It would simply see delicious flesh to tear with its teeth. Or a clumsy, crashing figure, smelling of fear, tufted with hair, from which to flee.

So the cave drawings of prehistoric humans might actually suggest the uniqueness of human consciousness, leading through our symbolic thinking to a kind of imagined meeting-of-the-minds with other animals (where, in fact, one can never occur).

This point led me to read aloud to the group a poem by Robinson Jeffers, which takes Richard’s point about the absurd and self-denying nature of this impulse to see ourselves as equals to other animals to its logical conclusion:

Vulture

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside

Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up in heaven,

And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing. I understood then

That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers

Whistle above me and make their circle come nearer.

I could see the naked red head between the great wings

Bear downward staring. I said, “My dear bird, we are wasting time here.

These old bones will still work; they are not for you.” But how beautiful he looked, gliding down

On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light over the precipice. I tell you solemnly

That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak and become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes–

What a sublime end of one’s body, what an enskyment; what a life after death.

7. Humans — Understood as Animals — Dealing with… Climate Change?

Dean spoke up to say that he is convinced, and has been as long as he can remember, that we are merely animals. That’s no problem for him to accept.

It troubles him when he thinks how humanity’s self-aggrandizement, over the past 5000 years, has led to terrible consequences by severing us from nature. This is what we do, he insisted, as animals who think they are “special”: consume resources at a high burn rate, putting the planet at risk.

Now, though, Dean argued, we must use our developed prefrontal cortex, our ability to reason, to reverse the damage we have already done. The only way to tackle climate change, for example, is to… get over our short-term thinking and self-defeating behavior brought on by our genetic predisposition.

I pointed out that there is a tension in Dean’s outlook. On the one hand, he seemed to be saying that we need to accept our status as animals, so we don’t sever our connection to nature. On the other hand, we need to “rise above” it to save the planet.

I questioned whether we really “rise above” our animal nature. Again, this seems to me a language of the past. Our prefrontal cortex, and our ability to represent our world and thoughts in symbols and verbal language, are, in fact, also part of our animal nature, are they not?

I drew on the analogy of a camera — with an automatic setting and a manual setting. Most of the time we operate on the automatic setting in our brains. This leads to some good results (“common sense,” it is often called). But in an increasingly complex world, it leads to some terrible results, very out-of-focus pictures, too. For example, one thing that is part of our “common sense” is that we tend to be suspicious of people that look different than us (automatic setting). As the world becomes more pluralistic and diverse, this hampers trust and open communication (in addition to being hurtful and unjust). So we become educated and learn to use our “manual setting” to make sure that we do not judge people harshly because of perceived differences (when you think about it, our legal system at its best is a kind of enforced manual setting — innocent until proven guilty, rules of admitting evidence, etc.). But my point is, I continued, it is important to recognize that BOTH of these systems belong to our animal nature. To “rise above” perpetrates the same separateness that Dean rightly condemns.

He conceded this. But his point still remained: how do we, animals that we are, deal with a problem like climate change?

Penda commented that, in her experience, the more simply people live, closer to the land, the more responsible they are about not damaging their environment. So by living in a small setting, among people whom one considers whole and irreducible and unique, among animals that one knows and respects in all of their wholeness too, people become more attune to living harmoniously with nature.

Yet Lucie pointed out that when we are in this present state we often cannot see the long-term, abstract consequences of our actions. Climate change, after all, would not be detected by people living simply in a small village. They would detect famine and drought (the effects of climate change), but they would not see the centuries long trend lines.

The combination of these two points struck me as a tremendous insight, which we may need to grapple with many times in this group.

We have two very different capacities as humans. On the one hand, we have our ability to live simply, attentively, and rewardingly, in a small community. I think of my mother’s extraordinary ability to be loving and present to everyone with whom she meets during her day. I think of the generosity and hospitality towards strangers often demonstrated by people living in rural settings the world over. On the other, we have the capacity to abstract from our experience, to see people as data points, and create models of our world. The remarkable edifice of science is a result of this approach — we learned to look to impersonal data, to rely on objective standards (interestingly, the values of science are, contrary to how our culture depicts them, very personal and human-centered, I would argue — truth-telling, evidence, parsimony, verifiability. But that is an argument for another time.)

The problem is that as we turn away from the more personal to our more linear or abstract thinking, our “prefrontal cortex” thinking if you will, we become ever more removed from that small village sensibility, that subjective and emotional connection to the world around us…

Perhaps, I asked, there may be a way to bridge this gap?

Perhaps there will be a way to use our “small village” sensibility to create, metaphorically at least, a link to the abstract knowledge that comes from leaving it behind? This, I would contend, is the only hope we have for combatting climate change.

Not dry argument, but personal, emotional –even, shall we say, tender? — engagement on a global scale. Is that even possible?

Otherwise, as a few of us had joked earlier in the evening, someone can feel very alarmed about climate change and carbon levels in the atmosphere — until he or she is offered the keys to a shiny  new, leather-upholstered SUV for free — Look! It’s yours and outside the door now! At this point  his or her neural networks light up brighter, I am afraid, in the desire centers of the brain than the low-level glow in his or her neural networks brought on by thoughts of climate change. We all fail this test everyday. It will have to be personal.

Again, being animals, I argued, I don’t think it coherent to think of us overcoming or “rising above” our nature. We must engage it, acknowledge it, and see the earth in a new “whole” manner, as a once stranger who is now our guest…

8. A Discussion About One of the Readings and Our Approach to Knowledge

A few members of our group, Marie-José, Setenay and Miriam, raised their objection to one of the reading selections for this month.

They were okay with the discussions of the practices of native peoples of America in The Ohlone Way and The Way We Lived. Nobody spoke to Abram’s Becoming Animal. And although Florence complained about the awkward translations, the poems largely passed muster too.

But the two chapters that I excerpted from The Cradle of Humanity by George Bataille really irritated some members.

Marie-José felt that Bataille’s tone was typical “white male”: impossibly certain, patronizing, self-involved. Setenay called him “unbearable.” Miriam shook her head in dismay.

Others in the group acknowledged that his tone was a little dated — we laughed about how he mentions his feud with Sartre at the beginning of one lecture with not a little self-inflation. Yet many of us did not find it so off-putting; you might say we discounted the “white male” obtuseness and read him for what insights he might have despite his dated tone.

After all, I argued, Batialle does acknowledge that he is not himself a “pre-historian,” and he concedes that his speculations about prehistoric cave paintings and culture are just that — speculative — right? He is admittedly just making it up as he goes. So, I asked Marie-José, is it that you don’t think he should be making these kind of speculations or assumptions at all? Or that he simply makes ones different from the ones you make?

Setenay clarified that it was not just his tone that troubled her. She said he was indicative of a larger confusion that she had with our group: she found herself torn between the two very different approaches we seemed to be taking towards understanding prehistoric people and their world.

On the one hand, when she learned that this was to be the topic, her expectation was that we would review the latest scholarly literature in the fields of paleoanthropology, paleoarcheology, etc. Then, she figured, we would be very specific about what claims we are making in terms of burial sites, tools, etc. That, clearly, was not the approach we took.

Or, she realized, we might look at prehistory as a metaphor, knowing that we are not necessarily getting an accurate picture of their lives, but using our imaginations to conjure a world that we can stand up as a kind of mirror to our own. This, she discovered in the readings and in the meeting, was more our approach.

Yet she found that Bataille’s looseness made her long for a more academic approach. Being a scientist, she wanted to get more specific in our data.

I thought this was an excellent description of two general approaches we might have taken. I explained that, although a more scholarly approach would be, without a doubt, fascinating and worthy, that doesn’t strike me as within the purview of this group.

At UC Berkeley there are no doubt in-depth courses meeting this fall that examine the prehistoric era. (Although even these scholars get it wrong and face ongoing disputes in the field, we can be sure that they are admirably getting closer and closer, with careful scholarship.)

I explained that my idea for this group is different, however. It want to use our readings each month as a kind of metaphor, a kind of mirror held up to our own present-day lives.

Any tension she felt on this I agreed is certainly valid, however — I feel it too. And I think it is a tension that we will feel often, as we read excerpts (but only excerpts, for lack of time) from different philosophers and poets and artists and writers and scholars and scientists from different historical epochs, with the aim of provoking us… instead of getting the scholarship exactly right.

(E.g. David Hume’s drawn-out epistemological argument about “secondary qualities” is not going to get as much time in that month’s discussion as his explanation of how human beings develop moral principles by way of a public language of praise and blame. Sorry, but we have to prioritize…)

To the argument that our approach might be miss certain things that a scholar would consider important, therefore, I would answer: yes, undoubtedly! But if we are seeking a rewarding and possibly life-changing alteration of our sense of ourselves as we live today, then sticking with a straightforward academic approach would, I would argue, also potentially miss important things.

For sometimes the scholar can miss the forest for the trees; in such cases he or she may only indirectly touch on the great forces working under the surface in our lives: our sense of ecstasy, of love, of sorrow, our fear of death, our deepest commitments.

And anyway, metaphors, we should remember, are not lightweight — they are a way into ourselves. They are, ultimately, how we frame the narratives of our lives. I would argue that both the academic approach and the more reflective approach are worthy.

9. Looking to Prehistory for an Updated Story of Our Origins

Setenay and I had a chance to carry on our discussion after the meeting, and by the end of it I believe that we arrived at a clearer picture of why looking at prehistory is useful.

It struck me, talking to Setenay, that even while pursuing a strictly non-supernatural approach to the important questions in our lives we still feel a need for a compelling story of our origins — if only as a kind of starting-point to our investigations.

These origin myths have important consequences.

Think of Hobbes: the “life of man” in a state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Think of Rousseau: “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”

Both are myths of what we were like in a “state of nature,” leading to very different conclusions about how to organize society.

Now here’s our chance… What do we want to base the story of our origins on?

The latest scholarship?

A piece of fiction we make up, whole-cloth, in the vein of Hobbes and Rousseau (or Christianity or Hinduism or other religions)?

Or something in between?

We would hope that our updated story will not fall prey to the magical thinking and creaky in-group/out-group thinking of the old Bronze and Iron age myths of the major religions. (Enough with the snakes and the booming voice of God, please.) Yet we can admit that, no matter how hard we try to resist it, we will ultimately have to base even this updated story of our origins on finite knowledge. Revision will always be necessary.

Again, this is not to say that an updated story of our origins will be equivalent to all other myths, from Christianity to Islam to Wicca to Ayn Rand’s Objectivism… Some myths are outdated and based on obviously dangerous or damaging beliefs. Let’s not fall into the trap of false equivalence!

But, yes, just as science is always indeterminate and ongoing, our understanding of the world around us and our own selves will always be indeterminate and ongoing.

I concluded from this conversation that we certainly do not want to make it up whole-cloth. After all, we are hoping, with all of our limitations, to develop an understanding of ourselves that resonates with our current knowledge about the world as is. And this requires adherence to the facts as best we know them. Then we can take it from there…

So I ended up, after the meeting, feeling more conscious than before of the need to explore our “story of origins” based on the latest paleoanthropology, paleohistory, paleoarcheology. Even knowing that we are looking at it as a metaphor, we will benefit from being as accurate as possible.

In short, I think we should revisit this in another meeting! Thank you Setenay!

10. One Last Round

Brad got our attention, near the end of the meeting, as it neared 10:30 pm, by bravely stating that the evening’s discussion had left him feeling “disturbed.”

If we are only primates — animals — he explained, then he found himself feeling horrified at the prospect that he is part of this species. Considering the damage we are doing to the earth, considering the crass culture around us, then he is finds himself implicated by this particular bipedal primate species’ failings.

I roared back (he’s my best friend, so I can do that with Brad):

“Disturbed? Why is it disturbing? For all of its vulgarity and violence, the world is full of extraordinary beauty too! Just look out that window,” I said, pointing out to San Francisco. “Think of the wonders out there. The medicines that save lives. The gas which gives us a warm fireplace right now. Look at the faces in this room, how full of love and longing each is…”

“I’m disturbed. I don’t want to debate you, Tom. I am saying how I feel.”

“And I love that!” I exclaimed. “I am glad you did. But I am giving the opposite perspective. I think if we accept ourselves as animals then it is clarifying — and liberating. Finally, we can look honestly at the choices we make, the trade-offs, the responsibilities we want to take on or choose not to take on…”

Nadine spoke up to say that she felt that humans, animals that we are, have a sense of guilt and shame for what is done by our species. We are aware, she said, of the many bad people in the world, the ones doing damage or inflicting cruelty, and it makes us feel implicated. Walden supported this by observing that we are the only animal who feels remorse.

But I challenged this too (holding back the roar this time): “I think this is a case where the language you are using is archaic,” I said. “There are not “bad” and “good” people. We are ALL implicated because we are ALL capable of making poor choices, complicated choices, and all of our choices do harm to someone, deprive someone of resources, exclude someone. Think of private property — right now there are people hungry, in Berkeley, and a monopoly of violence that we assign to the State prevents them from eating because of an artificial construct called ‘property’!

“Which brings us to the value of accepting our status as animals again,” I concluded. “Once we accept that there is no escape from the hodgepodge of impulses and motivations and last stands and sudden reversals that is our brain, then — only then — can we start to talk honestly about how we want the world to look. And what we are willing to do to make it look that way…”

It was a debate that surely we will continue.

Great meeting, everybody. Much to think about. I am so thankful for the open-hearted and open-minded way everybody at the meeting participated.

As always, please make any additions or corrections you have in the comments below.

See you next time!

by

Reading for the Second Meeting — EPICUREANISM

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2014

The next meeting. Our second meeting.

For our first we looked at… where we come from.

For this one we’re going to look at… where we are going.

*

There really isn’t any question about where we are all going, is there?

Like a great play, life is filled with moments of grace and beauty, laughter and joy. Perplexing moral dilemmas. Daunting challenges overcome. We wouldn’t give it up for a second.

But in the end, life is — I am sorry to say it — not a comedy, folks.

Like The Orestia, like Hamlet, like Lear… our lives belong, unmistakably, to the literary genre of tragedy.

hamlet

As much as we try not to think about it, we know it’s true: our lives are going to end in death — often bloody, usually painful. For everyone.

Damn it, but it’s true.

*

For this next meeting we are going to confront this head-on.

Death — the “undiscovered country,” as Shakespeare called it.

(Though as my son pointed out to me, it HAS been discovered — just nobody has ever reported back. Kind of like the Vikings finding America?)

VikingLongship2

How does it change things to know there is an end?

What does a person do with this life?

*

Please note that this month we are going to have our meeting on the second Thursday, November 13,  instead of third (due to a conflict for a lot of members in the group). I hope that is ok with everyone.

Our meeting will focus on the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, and the conflict between Epicureanism and the religious/supernatural outlook that opposes it (and triumphed — until now).

bronze

Epicurus (341 BC – 270 BC)

Epicurus is the first philosopher in the Western tradition to look at lived experience, as opposed to gods or spirits or immaterial ideals, as the proper guide to life.

Epicurus’ famous four points are:

1. There are no gods or other divine beings to influence your life — so don’t waste your time on them.

2. There is no after-life. Deal with it.

3. All that is important for a good life is already available to you.

4. All that is terrible in life, i.e. suffering, is not worth worrying about… since it is usually either chronic or intense, but not both.

In this month’s reading I have included:

  • The Epicurious Reader;
  • Some chapters from Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve about the re-discovery (in the 15th century) of a famous paean to Epicurus, “On the Nature of Things” by the Roman poet Lucretius;
  • Some excerpts from Lucretius’ “On the Nature of Things“

I may post more over the next weeks. Also, please feel free to find your own additional readings and materials online or elsewhere.

Enjoy! See you on the 13th.

by

On Théodore Monod

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014

by Florence Joliff

[In our October meeting, Florence mentioned to the group that in thinking about the prehistoric era she had been led to the writings of Théodore Monod, a French explorer, anthropologist, poet and writer. I encouraged her to share on the blog some of what she had read… if she would be so kind as to translate it into English (most of his works are not translated). Florence sent the following by email.]

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Théodore Monod: anthropologue, explorer, poet, writer

He wrote many books about his various explorations, always deeply interested in humankind, the definition of “progress”, and also obviously the ” modern” human relationship to nature.

He was an incredible nature lover and a great poet, also!
He conducted many observations, explorations, and trips in the Sahara desert ( and others) and found many paleolitic objects, paintings, etc.

His books are fantastic and a true pleasure to read over long period of time… I just wish he was translated in English! (other than the one book Desert).

Basic summary of some of his ideas:

Monod enumerates three steps/stages in recent humankind evolution:

1. The original relationship of man among other animals (magical and symbolic links with nature, and he argues that it is appropriate to still have some today);
2. Then the “divorce” with nature, leading to the “progress” of human power, rationalisation and domination etc. (He also recognizes the great steps in science);
3. And finally, our current “reconciliation need ” (this was my favorite part of his writings), namely, our need for a new way of thinking. Very similar to us!

SOME KEY SENTENCES I have extracted from his books:
To lead to the area of ” big stable joys”, humankind must be freed … by (among other elements) its sympathy, and establish a system of new moral values based on a general respect of life under all its shapes( animals, plants, living bodies).
He is inspired by Albert Schweitzer ‘s philosophy (in 1915) and also, briefly, Albert Einstein’s writings and thoughts…
Modern life, he held, must not be based on material comfort and individualism.

From homo “sapiens” to today homo “economicus”, all moral codes have been defined by religions and ideological systems.

Today humankind is facing new problems and issues generated  by the religion of progress, material profit, and “technolatrie”.

We must find again the “unity of things and living beings” with key words like: solidarity, communion, sympathy (empathy for others/ for all living beings)….
We must create a moral view as strong and demanding as our modern power. Otherwise we are in big danger of disappearing …
We must reconcile being and having.

He also makes reference to Victor Hugo very often: celui qui ceuille une fleur derange une etoile…
He wishes to live his life as his friend Teilhard (who had two passions: the love of science and the abiding question of god):  more eupraxie than orthodoxie: more rectitude of conduct than adherence to dogma.

Not sure this is clear Tom …and not perhaps very loyal to Théodore Monod (I have made a very approximate translation: Théodore Monod is much more complex and beautiful and simple in his writings).

by

Why the World Needs a Non-Supernatural Approach to Big Questions

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2014

I had two recent reminders of how important it is for us and others to develop a decidedly non-supernatural approach to all the big questions of life, and I thought I would share them with the group.

Reminder #1

Over recent weeks, on his popular blog The Daily Dish, the writer Andrew Sullivan has engaged his readers in a conversation about Sam Harris’ new book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (a book I found well worth reading, by the way).

In an early post, Sullivan, who is Catholic, discusses his and Harris’ different understandings of the tranquil feeling of “self-transcendence” that can arise during meditation or prayer (or even, unbidden, at other times).

In his usual concise manner, Sullivan lays out their opposing views:

“For Sam, this is evidence merely that meditation works, that stilling unending thoughts enables a person to live mindfully rather than to experience life as one goddamned distraction after another. He sees this as proof of the absence of a self and a way to live with clarity and calm as we are beset by feelings and passions, good and bad.

But the Pope suggests another way of seeing this: not as proof of the absence of self so much as the simplicity and calm of being oneself with God. It is a mysterious way of being, this communion with God. And maybe, experientially, it is indistinguishable from Sam’s meditative clarity and occasional epiphanies. But in it, for a Christian like me, the self does not disappear. It is merely overwhelmed by divine love and thereby fully becomes itself. In fact, this is the core mystery of our faith: communion with something greater and other than us, and a communion marked by love. In fact, something even more miraculous than that: a divine love that actually loves you uniquely.”

This irritated me.

It irritated me enough that I tapped out a quick email on my iPhone, while the kids jabbered and giggled around me.

I’m happy to say that Sullivan was good enough to include my contribution in his ongoing discussion with readers. (I am the “Another is more critical” in this post (click here to read).) Here’s what I wrote in full:

I love both you and Sam. I really do. I’m with him on the dangers and damage wrought by religion. With you on most political issues. But on this question from Waking Up, regarding the nature of the so-called “selfless” state of mind human beings sometimes experience during meditation or prayer, I’m afraid you are both wrong.

Andrew, why do you both seek transcendence so badly? For what you feel, what we all feel in these oceanic moments, is neither an experience of being flooded by God’s love (your view) or a glimpse into the underlying “selflessness” of consciousness (Sam’s view).

It is simply one way – one particularly harmonious and happy way! – that our particular species of primate experiences neuronal/electrical activity in our brains. We may speculate that meditation, prayer and the like probably have the effect of quieting activity in the left hemisphere and facilitating a more direct experience of the intuitive, non-verbal right hemisphere … something like that …Whatever it is, it is most certainly NOT anything transcendent, nor showing us a “truth” about the selfless nature of the universe. It is part of what our limited biology, fashioned by millions upon millions of years of adaptation, does.

Why is it so hard for you, and now Sam too, to accept your body and brain for what they are: your ONLY portal to experience, limited as they are, sometimes impulsive and directed, sometimes undifferentiated and peaceful, but always YOURS, beautiful and mortal and precious.

It is always self, and that is okay. Andrew, I say lovingly: go with the love you feel, and you can leave out the “God” part. To Sam I want to say: go with the love you feel, and you can leave out the incoherent idea of some “selflessness” uncannily experienced by the self.

155 years after On the Origin of Species and this is still hard for people to accept. But once you do it is clarifying, and liberating. It’s all natural, all animal – all the way down.

This may sound familiar to members of our group? You know my rants already.

Both Andrew, a Catholic, and Sam, an atheist, seem to be hung up on looking for a way “out” of self. As you know, I think that’s an old habit, inherited from religion.

In The Old New Way, as I see it, we are looking to find a way in — to be fully accepting of our place on this planet and in our bodies (with all of our limited cognitive capacities and conflicting moral drives and rapidly shifting emotional responses).

We want to accept ourselves as we are now. That, I think, is the right place, the only place, from which we can begin asking interesting questions about how to conduct our lives.

Beautiful. Mortal. Precious. Isn’t that enough?

Reminder #2

I had the pleasure of reading this week the biologist E. O. Wilson’s new book, The Meaning of Human Existence.

It was affirming how much Wilson is doing the same thing in this book that we are attempting in The Old New Way.

He begins his argument with an emphasis on primatology and prehistory (closely tracking the discussion we had in our first meeting), and then he takes off from there, trying to articulate a new perspective just as we are.

Here is what Wilson writes in the final chapter:

“The perquisite for attaining the goal is an accurate self-understanding. So, what is the meaning of human existence? I’ve suggested that it is the epic of the species, begun in biological evolution and prehistory, passed into recorded history, and… also what we will choose to become.”

But he knows that this will not be easy:

“The problem holding everything up thus far is that Homo sapiens is an innately dysfunctional species. We are hampered by the Paleolithic Curse: genetic adaptations that worked very well for millions of years of hunter-gatherer existence are increasingly a hindrance to global urban and technoscientific society…”

And he ends with an acknowledgement that any threat to the supernatural claims of the world’s major religions will be perceived as an attack, totally out of bounds, even taken as an expression of a “phobia”…

To this familiar response, he answers with an eloquent line:

“The idea is to place the personal dignity of the believer above the dignity of the belief that demands unquestioning obedience… That would be a true cry of freedom.”

I liked that.

A cry for freedom. Yes! That’s one way to see what we are up to.

Seeking a more accurate self-understanding. That too.

And finally, an acceptance that our lives are… beautiful, mortal, precious.

Can this “mortal” aspect of our lives be part of a net positive, when all is considered together? It is traditionally seen as a curse, a doom, a threat  — hence fables about an after-life. This, I think, is a crucial question that we will consider at our upcoming meeting (on Epicureanism).

Let’s keep at it. We will get somewhere, I am sure of it, one meeting at a time.